JOIN US! Meetings are are the second Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. in the Parish Hall.

English/Spanish bilingual speaker - occasional interpreter neededHome Visits – two to three hours monthly or every other month.

We're MUCH more than just food drives!

Our mission is to be the hands and feet of Jesus. No need is foreign, and we are called to seek out the needy around us. To meet the needs of our neighbors, we are involved in many activities.

While we do many collection drives (school supplies, food, blankets) one of the main activities of our conference is to do Home Visits with neighboring families, ensuring they have the basic necessities of a household.

We learn about our neighbors in need from the parish, from St. Vincent de Paul's district service center on Fish Hatchery Road, and with our own eyes and ears. For referrals that we receive from the district office of St. Vincent de Paul, we generally visit families within one to two miles of our parish. We also serve individuals from within our parish who might need assistance. They are individuals, single parents, and families of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Their needs are as varied as the people themselves.

Sometimes we visit with families new to the area; some have faced natural disasters or job losses; some are starting out with their own children for the first time; some are facing the hardships of retirement or the challenges of severe medical illnesses. Our conference has provided food, furniture, clothing, toys, Christmas decorations, work boots, school supplies, wheelchair ramps, 1st Communion clothing, baby clothing, diapers, and gift cards for shoes and boots.

No need is foreign to us, and we are always looking for new opportunities to live Christ's words: "Love one another as I have loved you."

The most welcoming group of people around!

In a parish as big as St. Maria Goretti, it can be challenging to truly get to know your fellow parishioners, especially without having kids in the school. One of the three main tenets of our St. Vincent de Paul conference is friendship, which along with service and spirituality form the heart of our group. We are diverse in age, ethnicity, and vocation but we share our Catholicism and our desire to serve our neighbors in need.

Commitment is such a scary word!

Our St. Vincent de Paul conference has many, many activities that go on throughout the year. We all have other responsibilities that we balance along with our service to others, and there is no required commitment. You can help out for as little as an hour receiving donations during our truck and blanket drives during the year, or you can participate in home visits for a couple of hours every month or two. You can take your family to the SVdP community garden during the summer for an hour or two, or host families through the food pantry every week. The variety of service projects accommodates a great variety of schedules, but we do have to issue one very important warning - serving others can be addicting, so don't be surprised if you soon feel called to spend more and more time helping your neighbors in need!

Yes, we need financial support too.

Through the generous contribution of the SMG Thanksgiving Day Mass collection, our conference is able to fund many of our ongoing activities. As with all things, however, we are limited by our budget and the bigger the budget, the more we are able to do.

If you are called to contribute financially to our conference, your donation will help us:

purchase shoe gift cards so families can buy shoes and boots for their children

pay for delivery of furniture to an empty apartment so our neighbors have a place to sit down

purchase bus passes to help the families get to jobs and school

buy personal items and starter groceries for the families we visit

provide assistance in other creative ways we find (wheelchair ramps, work boots, etc.)